Posts by Ian Rogers
120 posts • joined Wednesday 2nd May 2007 16:22 GMT
Posted in Facebook lowballs on initial IPO price
Rob(b)in' Hood
This bubble will burst, but it won't cause a catastrophe, just a redistribution of wealth from the greedy and/or slow to the smart, quick, con artists (sorry, investment advisors).
Unfortunately there will be a number of pension funds run by the slow lot...
It seems money is knowledge
So, you can buy some patents from another company and then act all hurt and pouty-faced 'cos someone else copied something you did from before you even existed.
You know, the US patent system seemed so perfect up until now but this appears to be ever so slightly out of kilter.
Gosh!
Flawed study?
I'm always happy to give an email address, or accept adverts by email, 'cos I just give a fake or add them to my spam list after the initial verification.
My mobile phone number is a different matter as there's no spam filter yet.
So cynical...
...it hurts. But I suspect it's true.
We all know someone who produces nothing but glossy presentations and brown-nosing the big boss. Unfortunately I have integrity and self-respect so I'm happy with a lower bonus.
Drinking what?
Floating around with globules of random "liquid"...
50 bucks per eye
$100 per user!!
This is either a lastminute.com moment (which will be very funny) or a sad bubble moment...
Posted in Bitcoin slump follows senators’ threats
3 deciduous forests buying one ships peanut
A "currency" that's "not meant to last"? Ooh, that sounds stable and worth investing in...
Bitcoin is an artifically limited asset that has no actual value and only perceived value. Apart from early miners who were effectively just handed cash, it's only worth now is to speculators who will buy, hold for a bit and then sell to the gullible.
Soon, when no-one wants to buy, there will be a crash when bitcoin's perceived value will match its actual value and a lot of mugs will be left holding nothing.
Who do I trust with my identification
Banks yes, Facebook no.
Virus
By His Noodly Appendages! Facebook isn't a virus, it's a bacteria - its mouldy spores spreading into all dead (or soon to be dead) parts of society...
How to make money from Facebook
1. Splunk some cash in during the "insider dealing" underpants round.
2. Sell quickly during the IPO before it does a lastminute.com
3. Profit
Posted in Wind turbine bonanza expected in Hull
When the wind blows
"...generate just over 84,000 gigawatt-hours annually. ...approximately one-quarter of present day UK electricity demand"
As long as you can store it between generation and demand that is. How many pumped-hydro stations do we have? Anywhere near enough?
Balls of Titanium
Every pic of that smug git Zuckerman here on El REg makes my skin crawl.
But all credit to him - valuing Facebook at 100$ per account (200$ or more per active user) is the bluff of the century!
The "investors" are going to lose their shirts...
In this case curse the sinners not the sin.
Harold Lewis makes the careful and accurate distinction that it's the global warming movement that is corrupt (and therefore possibly mistaken), not the issues around global warming.
The use of the word "incontrovertible" in an issue as complex as climate change is of course repulsive to any decent scientist.
I think Prof Lewis would be quite happy if global warming is proved to be true - he's a scientist, he doesn't care either way - but he is obviously insensed by the way a single point of view is being steamrollered through a supposedly scientific organisation. He wants the debate to be open and treated the same way as any other in the APS.
Posted in Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests
Turn a problem...
...into a feature. World's largest sundial anyone? Place tubs of water in the appropriate place, when they start to boil it's time to head to the bar...
Tinny Overlords
Compare the Lockheed with this http://www.daleklinks.co.uk/gallery/daryl-joyce/daleks-flying-saucer
I'm just saying...
standards != implementation
There's an important distinction between standards - particularly in representation, filing and API - and an implementation of those standards.
IBM is saying that open standards are good and that they'll use the best implementation of those standards. Firefox just happens to be the best implementation at the moment. The benefit of focusing on open standards rather than implementation as that one can always switch to a better tool/program if one comes along. There's a reason why MS has always dragged its feet about making their API and filing "standards" open...
Posted in Bono doubles down on Facebook
29x !
IMHO if/when facebook does IPO it will be the next lastminute.com - there's no way the market will stump up 29bil for this nonesense.
... and it will be very very funny :-)
The market may pay 5-10 times multiple though, which will still be a lot.
Little Bobby Tables
Ob XKCD (you'll be getting a lot of these) - http://xkcd.com/327/
Three major deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut
May I refer you to the works of Douglas Adams, in particular the bit where the Golgafrinchans adopt leaves as legal tender...
Posted in Facebook in 'solid net profit' shocker
ROI?
How much investor capital was consumed to get there? When will the return on investment be? If it's still in the red then it's still a hobby not a business (although a very big one).
Atmospheric pressure FTW
It's atmospheric pressure that powers siphoning and obviously so.
The pressure at the two liquid surfaces are equal, but now imagine travelling "up" the long pipe - the higher you go the lower the pressure will be due to the weight of the liquid below you acting against the surface pressure. When you're level with the end of the short pipe this difference in pressure is what drives the siphoning.
Spellchecker
The Telegraph has "hardon" in it's spellchecker dictionary?...
Wandering around all by itself
Mark, if you want to advance the cause of science how about starting with some simple maths:
1. Given the collision energy at the LHC what is the diameter of the event horizon if a black hole is created?
2. How does that compare to the diameter of electron orbit around the proton/neutron core of an atom.
3. Therefore, as the blackhole oscilates from one side of the earth, through the centre, to the other side just how much matter is impacted by the event horizon?
Clue: it's very, very, like you-know *very* small...
Posted in Linux coders do it for money
multi-monitors?
The last time I tried Ubuntu Karmic it was still rubbish at doing heterogeneous multi monitor display - i.e. laptop (Sony Vaio) plus external monitor. It's the only thing stopping me from going fully Microsoft free...
Posted in Intel cash pays down AMD debt
Ocean Finance
"and offer up to $500m in new senior notes to help finance the debt-reduction scheme"
When individuals take out a loan to pay off another one it's stupid. When corporations do it it's sound business practice...
Posted in ZFS gets inline dedupe
Lustre
I'm waiting for replication and de-duplication to come to Lustre, then everyone else can shut up shop and go home...
Posted in Virgin hijacks empty pages
3rd Way
Now the cat's out of the bag, like spam, this isn't going to stop. The exec's at the top of ISPs won't understand what the issue really is - they can only see the internet as the web and think this is a great idea to make money from <ahem> I mean "help" the users.
So DNS needs to come up with a 3rd way - a response that includes a NXDOMAIN but also an address of a "useful server" to redirect some protocols to.
Shock Horror
Webtards won't pay for free service!
Who'da thunk it...
Posted in Groovy punts SQL turbocharger
We respect the laws of physics
- by eliminating the "wait" -
This is of course marketing nonsense. There will still be a "wait", they've just made it short enough not to notice.
The Sun sets?
Sun started all this on-demand cluster malarky with www.network.com and then got left in the dust by a book seller, a search engine and now the horned beast!
What happened???
Posted in CGI Thunderbirds sadly not go
CGI would be rubbish
...just like the CGI remake of Spitting Image.
Do it with puppets on the BBC and call it ThundaBirds to get down wit' da yoof and stuff ITV's hold on the name Thunderbirds :-)
Black Helicopter is Thunderbird 6...
Posted in Costa Rican snacks on boyf's todger
balanced diet?
Went for the meat but (fortunately) not the veg?
Dinner
Did they have Coq au Bang?
Mine's the jacket without the trousers...
500V
The new "standard" euro e-plug - http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/21/rwe_plug/ - only goes up to 400V...
offshoring ... the civil service
With 3 hours till the budget comes this is all speculation... but IMHO this would be a crazy idea!
Forgetting the worsening (if possible) civil "service" by having it done thousands of miles away in a foreign language there's a distinct Total Cost of Ownership benefit to keeping it in-country: for every local job you outsource you have to add in the extra cost of paying job-seekers and other benefits to the sacked person, plus the lost revenue of those ex-earners no long spending cash in local shops and entertainments etc.
This is the one bit of protectionism that the Yanks have got right. It is *much* more expensive to spend tax money abroad than it is to keep it in-house, even if the local wage costs are higher at first glance.
Posted in U2 song whacked my hard drive
Vibration
Vibration kills disks. See this video of a Sun engineer shouting at a disk stack and measuring the performance :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
Invalid patent?
Is this now an accepted history then? Will Page be giving up the patent on grounds of prior art? (Will he heck!)
patch rush
The second, and perhaps much more interesting part of this contest, is how quickly the various maintainers get patches out to fix the identified bugs...
virgins, theists, agnostics and atheists
@AC 17:11 to paraphrase: "virgin" just means "first" - thanks for that, and you may be right, but the collective church has since definitely equated it with Immaculate Conception and the idea that Jesus is *literally* the son of a beardy God. Which is not too far from Xenu.
@Andy B - I didn't know the Jeanne Darc thing (you learn a lot here at el reg :-) and it's certainly plausible - and similar to the history of Jesus and writings in the bible. The point is that it's the *ideas* that are important, not the book they're written in or who said them. But try saying the bible is just a bunch of stories to a strong Christian, or questioning the history of the Qur'an!
Strength of belief exists on a graded scale and the names of them seem to get confused in a number of discussions, so here's my bash at sorting them out:
Strong theist: there is only one God(s) (and that's my God(s)!) who created all things. He/they will smite you with eternal torment if you don't believe and our relgious texts are literal and cannot be questioned! Now get down on your knees and PRAY!!!
Theist (Gnostic?): There definitely is a God who should be worshipped (even if you haven't been touched by one yet), though many religions have plenty useful things to say and all Gods are just the one anyway (though I have a sneaking suspiscion it's my one) so can't we all just agree with that and be happy?
Weak theist: I'm pretty sure there's something out there, but I don't know what. After all, this can't be all there is can it?
Agnostic: err, dunno really, haven't thought about it....
Weak atheist: There's no proof of a god so I don't believe, but there's no proof against it either so, yeah, whatever dude.
Strong atheist: There's no proof an god (and, for goodness sake, just one little hint would do) and it's not possible to prove the non-existance of a thing, but the evidence against it is so overwhelming that please, for the love of humanity, please grow up and stop believing in super-natural imaginary friends so you can open your eyes and take in the complex beauty of the real world and universe and the capabilities of animal and human kind!
I'm a strong atheist (if you hadn't guessed :-) so definitely don't have any beliefs in the super-natural. I do have one axiom for living though: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - also known as: "what goes around comes around" or "Karma" - and it seems that everything else can be pretty much derived from that. Despite this being shared with numerous other people, including one commenter, it is *not* a belief or religion!
I may also make assertions like "I think the the opposite of Faith is Curiosity" and find questioning things a useful way of improving life for all, but, again, this is just a way of life and not a belief or religion. Here's a good question for you: what's the difference between a belief and a religous belief? When you answer that fully you'll understand why religion, and the belief in gods, makes strong atheists so angry.
Strong Atheism and Zen Buddism, with its notion of constant questioning, probably have a lot in common, but I haven't done enough reading/thinking/asking questions to say for sure.
[El reg *so* needs a proper forum for this sort of discuss. C'mon vultures, just get the slashdot software installed :-]
Posted in Symbian shows release plan
@E
I re-read Bill's article again. It's not clear that Symbian are planning to completely re-write each version from scratch. Now that *would* be nutty!
Posted in Symbian shows release plan
More research needed Bill
"The plan is nothing if not aggressive - even Apple doesn't try and launch two versions of its OS a year"
On the other hand this is exactly what Ubuntu does with its April and October releases and manages very well on a very wide range of hardware - and the range would be even wider if device makers would release OSS drivers.
I'm afraid Bill you need to hand in your Geek Pass...
@Code Monkey
There's lots of historical evidence that Moses, Jesus and Muhammad etc. were real and great leaders of people, just like Joan of Arc, Ghandi, Martin Luther King etc. Jesus was, though, the son of Joseph and the *maiden* Mary - the original Hebrew of Isiah is very clear on that point AFAIR: the "Virgin Mary" nonesense was made up by Luke decades later.
All super-natural dieties are just figments of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's imagination of course.
Back to Scientology: this is excellent news. Now reporters all over can dig out vids of top Scientologiest denying Xenu and ask why lying is part of their religion :-)
Posted in AMD aims CPUs at 10in SCCs
Good grief
why is this so hard for some "reporters" or "analysts"?
Silent, 5-6+ hours battery, small enough to chuck into bag but with full keyboard = netbook (eee 901 etc.)
Same as above but too small for a keyboard = electronic book (Kinder 2 etc.)
Noisy, possibly larger, possibly shorter battery life = laptop.
But it's all just usual nonesense marketing categorisation of a continuum.
Quacks like a duck...
So, despite being "not a blade server" this is a blade server with the blades mounted horizontally...
@Difficult
Developers use Debian, Users use Ubuntu - not too hard to remember! If you're finding Debian "difficult" then you're a user not a developer...
@Anonymous Coward
"under your rock" yourself sunshine - you seem to have missed the point.
The Internet was created as a reliable network (btw. I've been "doing" the Internet thing for 20 years now), the "unfettered access to info" bit came much later when nerds (like me) realised we knew a heck of a lot more than The Powers That Be.
But that is coming to an end now as governments get themselves quite highly techy committees. So the holes in the national border that the Internet creates are slowly being blocked up again - and this is inevitable (if slow).
The *real* issue - once you get your head out of the armchair-activism sand - is what I said about "content ... illegal to import or own, by local laws". The technology is catching up with the law (or the law is catching up with the technology depending on how you look at it). If you don't like what's listed as illegal then start writing to your MP. Standing on the rooftop, can of beer in hand, shouting "they'll never take my internets" really won't cut it.
Only a matter of time.
Much as I hate censorship, the more radical hippy founders and supporters of the Internet have been getting away with snubbing their collective noses at the idea of National Sovereignty for quite a while now.
If an article of content would be illegal to import or own, by local laws, if it was rendered in some kind of physical media (books, photos, film etc.) then there's no reason to expect a government to allow it to be imported via the Internet...
